UNLEARNING THE WRONG; LEARNING THE RIGHT… OR BOTH?
reflections on learning, (un)learning and what seems wrong or right to learn at different moments in life.
Today I would like to talk a little more about what I believe is very important for anyone’s life, whether personally or professionally: learning how to deal with challenges. As many of you know, I am frequently invited to hold workshops on idea development and problem-solving methodologies, as well as idea and business acceleration programs. Well, I was recently invited to facilitate a “hackathon” aimed at students aged 12 to 16.
That there is a big difference between teaching something to young people in training and adults is nothing new to anyone. Not surprisingly, there are disciplines such as pedagogy, which studies the learning of these young people, and andragogy, which focuses on adults.
For those who do not know the meaning of a Hackathon, originally focused on programming, the term hackathon emerged from the combination of the words “Hack”, associated with breaking through or challenging, and “Marathon. Since then, events in this format have challenged participants from all areas to find innovative solutions. Therefore, it can be said that it is a combination between programming and a marathon, bringing together events that bring together programmers, designers and other professionals linked to software development, which can last from a day to a week and in general is an ideal environment for the development of innovation and solving challenges.
The first versions of Hackathons appeared in the late 1990s, in Canada. During a JavaOne conference, SUN challenged ten programmers to create a Java script that would allow secure communication between Palm V users. Over time, many benefits became clear to justify the use of this strategy, such as:
- encourage innovation.
- develop new techniques and skills in the organization.
- integrate employees with a focus on teamwork.
- improve networking among participants.
Therefore, today’s post aims to talk a little more about these innovative initiatives, but also to ask questions about the learning process, especially for young people. It seems like something unconnected, but believe me, when we talk about business, leadership training and young people learning, we are discussing extremely correlated topics.
As previously mentioned, I have already designed and participated in several initiatives to create new innovative businesses, as well as hackathons. In particular, I recently participated in what is called an “Ideathon” aimed at young people between 12 and 16 years old who study in the Brazilian educational network. What is so interesting and different from the existing hackathon examples known to everyone?
A lot of things! The first is, of course, young people… an audience of children who begin to look at entrepreneurship even at such a young age. If you are reading this post, I challenge you to think about when the first time in your life was that you heard the word entrepreneurship. We can go even further with this challenge: when was the first time you deliberately practiced entrepreneurship? Therefore, this is a visible change in the way young people prepare and imagine the market.
But why that?
We can say that with the arrival of content creation platforms, many young “millionaire” entrepreneurs were introduced to a very young audience (as well as others that were not so young). It can be said that this new profile of idols or leaders, content creators, increasingly younger, without necessarily having traditional training, explains the fact that we see young people looking to dive into entrepreneurship.
PROSUMERS
Studies that articulate work and consumption have been carried out by a series of authors who deal with the so called “prosumption” or co-creation of the consumer as a producer of value, especially through the internet. According to Bauman (2001), the formation of society is associated with living a lifestyle that has the incessant search for happiness as its main driver. Consumption gains another dimension that has not yet been sufficiently explored in the work relationship. Therefore, due to the fact that we live in a “consumer society”, the role of the user becomes much greater than just consuming a product but helping other users to consume it. According to the author, “work and consumption are confused, making it impossible to separate working time from non-working time”.
It is no longer possible to just look at the production of any good or value without considering the consumer. However, we began to observe studies on the frontiers of production and consumption. Therefore, the prosumer “is the one who interacts with tools such as Youtube, Wikipedia, Facebook, Booking, etc.” (Ritzer, 2014). In some cases, like on YouTube, he/she can become even more protagonist.
Therefore, we already know why we see more and more entrepreneurship initiatives associated with young people, they are already protagonists and generators of value for the creative society. However, what is different when we “teach” these young people to become more entrepreneurial?
Firstly, it should be mentioned that these young people need to “unlearn” less than adults. Unfortunately, our regular educational formation is still based on teaching techniques that are based on myths that Traditional Management Practices still trusts such as:
- “Price formation of a product or service is the sum of its costs for communication and delivery to the final consumer”.
- “A company needs to create a product and then discover the best marketing strategies to sell it”.
- “Make the same product better and/or cheaper”.
- Among many other “indisputable truths” …
These and many others are common “teachings” in traditional MBAs and Business Schools. However, every time a high-level professional need to deal with company’s main challenges, they need to unlearn them and learn concepts that are much less simple to internalize. Concepts that are not as concrete as those mentioned above and, therefore, are much more difficult to practice and understand.
According to Alvin Toffler (1970):
“By instructing students how to learn, unlearn, and relearn, a powerful new dimension can be added to education.”
For the psychologist Herbert Gerjuoy (1964), it is a simple question where:
“The new education must teach the individual how to classify and reclassify information, how to evaluate its veracity, how to change categories, when necessary, how to move from the concrete to the abstract and vice versa, how to look at problems from a new direction — how to learn alone. The illiterate of tomorrow will not be the man who cannot read; he will be the man who did not learn to learn.”
However, where does the relationship between entrepreneurship, hackathons and learning come into play? Exactly in the behavioral scope that Schumpeter (1962) brings so much in his teachings on the subject. For this reason, hackathons have a history of being used as a tool that not only helps in the selection of new talents by large organizations, but in the molding and training of these talents.
I can say that when managing an activity such as a hackathon, more specifically called an ideathon for young people, it is easier for this profile (young people) to understand and apply the skills necessary to complete the learning journey (see article on the behaviors suggested by the entrepreneur in the different phases of creating a business). This is largely because the concepts taught are closely associated with the concept of design thinking, which seeks to help people deal with ambiguous situations, that is, when there is no consensus on the meaning of something. For this reason, I raise one more question: when was the last time you were in some type of meeting where it was necessary to discuss the meaning of something with other interested parties?
I will briefly mention another adjacent topic, but as I don’t want to make this article even more boring, I won’t go into depth. Perhaps many do not know, but it can be said that the main difference between “kidding” and a “game” is the simple existence of rules that characterize the second. What does this mean and how do I relate it to the subject of this post? It means that if you are participating in any activity, no matter how fun it is, and it has some pre-defined rules, you are in a kind of game. However, if the discussion of what can or cannot be done is part of the activity, you are in the so called childrens kidding.
That’s why we say that “kidding” is for children, even though we know that these same children are the most excited when they take part in some type of game. But the great truth is that “kidding” is not easy for everyone, as it is necessary to have some skills that we adults lose over the years. Among them is tolerance and the ability to initiate things that have no meaning. Some studies by Vygotsky (1987) present play as something so old and so important for society that even some less intelligent species can do it. Anyone who has never seen, for example, dogs that have never seen each other start a game of biting, pulling, curling up, etc. to the point where one side imposes a “limit”? This is a dynamic discussion activity between parties.
Most of society’s most complex problems, where adults are in the lead, some children’s behaviors are crucial to deal with. Complex problems do not have a name and/or surname, their meaning and each person’s relationship with it is different for each lens that acts or observes, therefore, the ability to collectively “discuss rules”, like a child’s game, seems something of value very high. Finally, whenever I hold behavioral workshops associated with entrepreneurship with adults, I usually present some participants with gifts and/or mentoring through a quiz that challenges each person’s understanding of their entrepreneurial behavior.
Well, since these are questions about entrepreneurial behavior and issues that are not so concrete, guess what the result was when comparing the performance of adults and children? I won’t say much other than: Kahoot’s history of the number correct answers and scores has never been as high as that achieved by the little ones who participated in the competition in October 2023 😉
REFERENCES
- Bauman, Z. (2001). Consuming Life. Journal of Consumer Culture, 1(1), 9–29. https://doi.org/10.1177/146954050100100102.
- Ritzer, G. (2014). Prosumption: Evolution, revolution, or eternal return of the same? Journal of Consumer Culture, 14(1), 3–24. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469540513509641.
- Toffler, Alvin. Future Shock. New York: Random House, 1970.
- Gerjuoy, I. R., Gerjuoy, H., & Mathias, R. (1964). Probability learning: Left-right variables and response latency. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 68(4), 344–350. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0043843.
- Schumpeter, Joseph A., 1883–1950. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. New York :Harper & Row, 1962.
- Vygotski, Liev S. La Imaginacion y el Arte en La Infancia (Ensayo psicológico). Colonian del Carmen: Ediciones y Distribuciones Hispánicas, 1987.
